04/14/2012
Riley Watches The Phil Spector Trial
© Myfanwy Phillips 2009
On The Road Again
This week, I'm packing. When I was nine years old I was sent back from Malaysia (where I grew up) to a boarding school in Bath, England. It was called 'The Royal School for Daughters of Officers of the Army.' There were 750 of us - young girls incarcerated there between the ages of eight and eighteen. Because we all had to move so often, there was a weekly class called 'packing.' They would put trunks and boxes and suitcases on a stage with a whole variety of other items - shoes, towels, hats, books and all. You'd pack. Even if you can do it well, which I can, it's not always easy. Death, divorce and moving they say - in that order.
I'm going from a really great little house on Lizard Lane, off Bonanza Creek Road where they make western movies (for instance, the remake of True Grit was made on our doorstep at the Lone Butte) to a small cabin in rural Vermont. I've been in the southwest for eleven years and it's done for me right now. My plan is to drive up through Cheyenne Wyoming to the Badlands of South Dakota and on to Fargo and across the Michigan peninsula, following the lake. I'll go down past Detroit and on to Troy New York. John Steinbeck took some of that trip in his book 'Travels with Charlie.' I was enchanted when I read it. I'm traveling with my own particular Charlie, Mr. Spade Face aka Riley, and my two cats Zachary and Bill. It's a new chapter. In the bottom left of the photograph of my dog is the shadow of a movie set motel that they made around the corner here a couple of years ago. I can't remember the name of the film, but yes, from my point of view, motels usually mean 'on the road again!'
04/13/2012
Self Portrait
This is a painting saying a final 'no' to a relationship that was ending (that's the the blue part). On the shelves there's a letter on a doorstep; there's a small jar full of gold stars and half a heart. I was staying in the house of a friend in Toronto (see the same lampshade also two posts down in the iPad painting). I was leaving Canada, for ever I thought (buildings going down the sink). I'd just come back from Florida in my '69 Lincoln with the suicide doors after living in a trailer there for a while. I had been a cocktail waitress in a bar called The Barn in Daytona Beach where I wore a cowgirl outfit and a cowboy hat! One night, at race week, I made $400 in tips; there was an old gentleman who came in every evening, had one drink and left me $20. He told me he owned a coal mine. I lived on that money for weeks.I loved that job!
© Myfanwy Phillips 1981
04/02/2012
A Valentine
© Bonnie Warwick 2012
02/29/2012
iPad Painting
© Peter Prangnell 2012
02/18/2012
Gary Carter 1954-2012
Gary Carter died the day before yesterday. I wrote something about him last year (look to the October 'archives' at the right side of the screen.) On Saturday the New York Times called him "A Star with a Smile, Forever Kid." He started out as the rookie catcher for the new Montreal Expos in 1974. He was a great baseball player. Yes, that's him - a sweetheart of a guy.
"I do like my Cap'n Crunch."
02/17/2012
Mud Season on Lizard Lane
This is the road that leads up to my house. Admittedly, it's a photo from a few years ago and it's not so bad up here today - but it can be like this overnight, anytime, this time of year.
01/09/2012
Scott Taylor aka Vermin Supreme
I first met Vermin Supreme at a party in Rockport, MA. He and his wife Becky had a house way back in the sticks; you left your car by the side of the road and walked through the woods to get to it. As in the words of the song by Flanders and Swan, so it was at Vermin's place - "we're terribly house and garden here at number 7B... The garden's full of furniture and the house is full of plants." There were, indeed, lots of plugged-in televisions flickering in the dark among the trees!
Vermin has been running for President for as long as I can remember. A decade ago he was campaigning on the Brush Your Teeth platform. This year, tomorrow, in New Hampshire at the primary, he wants to give free ponies to all Americans. Go figure!
© Parade Magazine January 2012
01/02/2012
Nick and Hank Wiebe
© Myfanwy Phillips. Grass Roots. Winkler, Manitoba 1972
